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Re: Alexander Keiller's Avebury/The Sanctuary
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Evergreen Dazed wrote:
Mustard wrote:
Evergreen Dazed wrote:
Mustard wrote:
Evergreen Dazed wrote:

I've been there, and its a nice place to visit, but you don't get the buzz, because you know what you are looking at isn't bona fide. It makes for nice photos, but it detracts from the sense of place.

Surely 'integrity' is the important word in all this. I get a much stronger feeling standing at the Sanctuary, imagining what it was like (to my mind the concrete posts aren't saying 'look at us' they're just an indication, to aid your thoughts) rather than a kind of pretence with modern stones. As mentioned earlier, that does feel a bit disney to me.
I don't like the idea at all.

I strongly disagree. Which I guess goes to show just how subjective and personal a lot of this is. Each person's experience of any site is unique to them. Which in turn, explains why it's so hard to reach agreement and to reconcile all our different preferences.


Fair enough, and thats what a forum like this is all about I guess, its great to speak to people holding opposing views, broadens your own thinking.

Given that a lot of this whole subject is about the use of imagination in one sense or another, its seems so odd to me to want to put in a load of modern stones, almost 'concreting' an image or thought.
It feels like radio vs TV in some ways, in the sense when you are forced into using your mind and imagination it seems to be a richer experience, but when you are just presented with 'here it is' its somehow slightly shallower (to my mind) and appeals to a more base need to just 'see' something, the visual, rather than experience it fully in other ways.

Its the site thats important, not people wanting to be visually entertained.


Again, I strongly disagree. I also think it's unfair to characterise any restoration as merely "visual entertainment". When I visited Devil's Quoit, it not only looked absolutely stunning, to *me* it felt like walking into a piece of history. I felt a real connection to what it must have been like to approach a *complete* stone circle, and I have seldom experienced anything so profound at an ancient site. It wasn't simply a matter of "ooh, bit shiny thing! Distraction! Where can I get a burger?"

Obviously there are a LOT of other considerations with restoration or reconstruction at any given site, but my point is that we all experience these sites in different ways. What's important to *you* may not be what's important to *me*, but that doesn't make either of our sets of experiences or preferences any the less valid.


I absolutely agree, all points of view are valid and our experiences and preferences are bound to be different in the detail, even if broadly similar in general.
Don't get me wrong I do love to see a site in as good a condition as possible, but for me, I get more out of even a ruined 'genuine' site, say a forgotten collapsed dolmen, or even an almost inperceptible bump in a field, rather than modern stones put into old stone sockets.


It's interesting, isn't it, how we all approach this differently? While I'm still interested in all the little quirks and bumps of our historic landscape (there's a tiny bit of medieval abbey canal that fascinates me... looks like little more than a ditch), it's the visual sites that really move me. I find it easier at such places to step outside the modern world and connect with the past. It occurs to me that it might be something as fundamental as brains being wired differently responding to different stimuli....


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Posted by Mustard
24th January 2013ce
13:06

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Re: Alexander Keiller's Avebury/The Sanctuary (Evergreen Dazed)

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